I will be 35 years old at 3:20 PM on May 24, 2007 and this amazes me. 35 is just so completely and undeniably indisputably and beyond a doubt a grown up age! AND now, just in time for being 35, I suddenly find myself doing all sorts of very grown up things, which, since I am now offically a grown up, are of extreme interest.

Grown up topics which currently fascinate me include:
Taxes
Stock options
Successful stepparenting strategies
Health care
Mortgages
Car mileage
Dental implants and tooth crowns
Jogging
Therapy
Buying a house which is not located in a ghetto

If that is not a grown up looking list, then I don't know what is.

And get this, for my birthday, I want a TomTom One GPS navigator and a Zen alarm clock. It used to be all about glitter and $20 bottles of champagne. Now it's about not getting lost and waking up on time. Wow!

I got my snaggletooth fixed in Mexico last January. See?

I go to a pair of identical twin dentists from mexico city.

one is a little bit nicer than the other, but besides that, you can't really tell them apart.

see?

some people are sad about my missing gap.

but my gap was not nice and straight and sexy like lauren hutton or madonna's.
it was crooked and stubby and yellow.
and eating spaghetti was messier than it need have been.
it would get stuck, flip up and thwack me in the nose.

so i am happy to no longer be a gap toothed woman.

Further reflections on turning 35.

British songwriter, Billy Bragg wrote:
"For the girl with the hourglass figure
time runs out very fast..."

I now know what he meant.

I used to be shaped like this:

now I am shaped like this:

I patted, rubbed, fondled, cooed and loved up some gray whales during our trip to Baja in February.

I don't think I will ever get over this.

Many people ask why I am so obsessed with whales.
A whale lust story is in the works.

I hope it will explain everything.

We saw a half a dozen blue whales in the Sea of Cortez, as well. I want to help Fernando Sais, a great whale expert and great man, build a museum about marine mammals in Loreto. Yes. I am plotting.

My story about go go dancing in Crete has made its way into the world! It is in a collection of stories by women about their Greek experiences called Greece: A Love Story. And the best thing of all about this is that the whole book is a great read!!!

You can buy it at all of the big bookstores and online
Spend a couple extra bucks, support an independent bookstore.
Buy it at Powell's
Or save a few bucks but don't support the little man.
Buy it on Amazon

Incoming readings! I will read my go go girl story for you here, alongside some of the other amazingly talented authors:

MAY
San Francisco
Get Lost Books
1825 Market St
May 17, 7pm

JUNE
Seattle
University Book Store
4326 University Way N.E, U-District
June 11, 7pm

By the way, all these readings mean I'll be in San Francisco and Seattle real soon. My Josepi will be w/ me in SF from May 12 - 15 and we are especially looking for a place to stay during that time. a guest room. a futon on the floor. a pied-a-terre. If you or someone you know would be able to host us during that time, I would be so thankful! After Joseph leaves on the 15th, I will stay on in SF until the 18th and will still be looking for places to stay, but at that point even a simple couch would do. Please contact me if you or someone you know has space in SF, for me +/- my beau. Thanks!

Eric loooves springtime in Oregon because you can really see the conditions of evolution in action. Rain! Sun! Hail! Flowers! Green stuff! Life! Mud! Hot! Cold!

I, however, am a confused birdy who is thinking she came back from Mexico a little too early as I shiver away in my studio, having to check twice a day to make sure it really is April yet refusing to turn on the heat because it is April and we shouldn't need heaters anymore, dammit, and besides, every time I turn on the gas I hear little Iraqi children crying and exhausted polar bears gasping for breath as they look for an ice flow has melted away.

Rain Magazine is publishing an anthology of Fisher Poet's yarns, songs, poets, sketches and so on.

If you come to
Astoria, Washington .......on
Thursday,
May 10 ......................... & go to the
CCC Art Center ............. at
7 PM,

you will find many fisher poets standing around, clutching their copies of the 10th Anniversary Fisher Poet's Commerative Anthology and waiting for their turn at the mike. I will be reading about my ongoing problems with fish fever there. I did not fish this year. I felt badly, what with the planet dying and all, and just couldn't do it. But I am still itching to catch, kill and eat fish by the boatload.

Because I did not get much of an ocean or fishing fix last year, and because I am jonesing for a little adventure right about now, and because it has a nice ring to it, I will be riding the river, which is outside of my studio in Portland to the mouth of the Columbia River in Astoria on my birthday.

Kurt Vonnegut is dead. It was not cigarettes, booze, or sleeping pills that killed him. I bet he thought that was funny. Everyone should read his last book: A Man Without A Country. It pretty much says it all.

I did The Forum and found out that I am perfect, whole and complete just the way I am. What a friggin' relief.

Write to me with your news, invitations to stay in your pied-a-terres, boat offers, suggestions and advice on how to save our ooey gooey puddle wonderful planet, and so on.